Valenzuela, like many of Lundell’s students, works in the barn to help pay for her lessons.

After a few years of giving discounted lessons to city kids at barns around Tucson, Lundell bought the little barn, which had been used for storage for about 15 years, and opened her academy.

She has about 50 students, many whose families wouldn’t be able to afford full-price riding lessons.

“This is the kids’ barn,” Lundell said. “There’s some real magic between kids and horses.

“They helped clean it up and make it nice. We had an explosion in enrollment over the summer. We had camps, and then the flood came.”

After the flood, Lundell asked for help from the Pima County Office of Emergency Management.

She got in touch with Mike Walsh, who normally works for the Pima Animal Care Center but was called in to help with the workload caused by the flood.

“He said, ‘How much do you need?’ and told me I needed release forms. He made it appear that it would be no problem,” Lundell said.

“I told her it’s a possibility. I made no promises. It was not my decision to make,” Walsh told the Tucson Citizen.

On Thursday, Lundell got a call from a county employee, who told her the county couldn’t give her soil after all.

“You’d think the county would want to help. We’re creating an after-school program and giving kids hands-on experience with the horses,” Lundell said.

“You’d think it would be easy for them to just bring in a truckload of dirt.”

Lundell said Thursday that a friend in Benson offered her all the dirt she can haul away free.

But she can haul only about 3 cubic yards in one trip.

“Hopefully, I’ll be back in business next week. It just depends on how much dirt I can get in here,” Lundell said. “I need to get back in business; it’s just hurting me so much.”

Lundell can be reached at 907-3965.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2